This invention relates to a method of processing silver halide photographic materials, more particularly, to a method that is capable of processing silver halide photographic materials in a shorter period of time.
A persisting need in the fields of handling silver halide photographic materials has been to shorten the process time so as to realize rapid processing. To take platemaking operations in the printing industry as an example, the efforts to increase the operational efficiency and to streamline the process have been remarkable and this has raised the need to shorten the time for processing light-sensitive materials for printing. In response to this need, various studies are being conducted in order to shorten the time required for processing light-sensitive materials. However, the ideas proposed so far are merely based on shortening the length of process line or increasing the line speed (the speed at which the light-sensitive material to be processed is transported) and various problems occur if these approaches alone are taken. Outstanding problems are insufficient fixation (i.e., not all silver is removed as a result of fixation) and the poor storage stability of processed light-sensitive materials. The performance of processed materials has also been found to deteriorate in other ways as evidenced by lower sensitivity, color remnant and decrease in contrastiness.